For the most part, I find the magazine too esoteric, too tied to the great ships of the past, as though it was being written for a handful of die-hard enthusiasts. The rest of us buy the magazine with great hopes, but rarely really end up reading the magazine.
Or so it seemed. But recently I’ve seen a bit of a change, a change never more obvious than through the set of articles in the January/February issue, articles devoted to Shantyboats.
The first describes how Harry Bryan came to design a shantyboat. Following a world cruise, he’d dreamed of the simplicity of the shantyboat. The shallow draft. The cozy spaces. The esthetic of it all. But life got in the way. Then, a good twenty years later, he built his self designed dream shantyboat for a customer. It is a thing of beauty, really, a mere 20 feet long and an easily trailerable 8.5 feet. He built the boat of solid timber laminated in two layers, not the usual plywood.
The shocker? The article says the final cost, including tender, was $75,000. That is no Shantyboat at that price… in this author’s opinion at least. A beautiful boat… really very lovely and well conceived… but if there is any definition of a shantyboat it doesn’t include a price tag like that. (there is a topic about this in our ShantyboatLiving.com forum. Share YOUR thoughts there.)
Check here for plans. Check our ShantyboatLiving.com article here, with much greater detail.
Next, Benjamin Guy writes a “reflection on owning a shantyboat”. It seems he was the buyer of this beautiful boat/yacht.
The series continues with a section called, “Interpreting the Houseboat”. Featured is Atkin’s Retreat… Chris Carr’s River Walker… and Devlin’s Millie Hill. There are two versions, though the article mentions only the second. The first is worth studying as well. All these links give far more detail on each design.
Finally, there is a book review of SHANTYBOAT by Harlan Hubbard, as written by Harry Bryan. Buy the book here.
It’s an issue well worth picking up!
